Lack of adaptation is death
A couple of weeks ago the concept of "lack of adaptation is death" floated up in a meeting. This concept can also be described as being stuck in a rut. We do things the way we’ve always done them, even when they don’t serve us as well any more. If your business strategy and thinking is not flexible, that lack of adaptability can cause your business to fail.
In 2011, HBR published an article: Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage. The article says that in order to adapt, a company should have the ability to read the signals, experiment, and act quickly. By experimenting, the company can quickly test new products and services, as well as receive feedback from consumers. But the ability to act fast is a function of decision-making cycle time. If it takes too long to make the decision, your company will not have an adaptive advantage.
So what does adaptability mean? At its core, adaptability has two parts: flexibility and attitude. With products, we want to find a product market fit, to find our customer and deliver them an amazing experience. To be able to do that we need to spend more time with customers, doing small experiments, and getting feedback. It means being able to adapt our product or service to cope with changing contexts, and new challenges. It means being able to critically think and reflect on the outcomes we are aiming for and the results we are getting. It means being able to adapt our decisions and actions based on information we are gathering.
This reminded me of a book I read last year, Unlearn by Barry O’Reilly. In the book, O'Reilly talks how successful people have a formula for success that worked for them in the past. But expertise can hold people back from learning new things. When the situation is different, when the context is different, we need to unlearn old habits, challenge existing mental models, and get outside our comfort zone. Instead we should do small and cheap experiments with quick feedback loops, to test our assumptions. We should break large-scale goals into much smaller tasks that build up to that goal. We should think big, start small, and learn fast — to get out of a rut and start shipping again.